


Aphelion

by mortalitasi



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Friendship, Gen, General, Romance, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:52:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4687949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortalitasi/pseuds/mortalitasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There comes a time when we all must leave the light and turn our faces to the darkness. You have to be brave, if you've been born in the shadow of Yharnam. Hunt well, and hope you die well, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aphelion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goatrocket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goatrocket/gifts).



> Cosette is my dear best friend's creation. i only borrow her ladies to write about them and their amazing backstories. cheers!! :'D

☩

 

 

 

Eileen learns at twelve that beasts can hide inside human skin.

It doesn't matter if it sits pretty on them—they can burst at any time, like sacks stuffed too tight, all slapping sinew and tearing tendons, twisting, squealing, _turning_ , always turning. Turn. It becomes a feared word. A dreaded word. _He's turning_. She _turned_. They _turn_ others. A scary word. Forceful, feared, detested. She doesn't understand, at first. What _could_ a girl from the hinterlands understand? Nothing. It's all pointless pain and bloodshed to her, distant tales of frightening happenings, a bad dream she can block out with warm hands and a soft enough pillow.

At fifteen, she learns that people can die long before they stop breathing.

A man comes for Mum in the middle of the night, slipping through the locked window like smoke, and she almost races out of her hiding place to tell him _stop, you'll die, she'll kill you!_ But all she does is sink lower against the wall, behind the bars that have kept her safe for so long, and listens—Mum screams, terribly, and Eileen crushes her knuckles into her ears, like that will stop the sound from bleeding through, but it doesn't help. She hears everything: thudding footsteps, what's left of their glassware breaking, the sound of the floorboards rattling. Then, one last _thump!_ And everything goes quiet.

It's so silent that when the man throws the doors to the cellar gate open, it's a complete, terrifying surprise, and she shrieks, covering her face at the incursion of torchlight. Even after her vision adjusts, she can't _see_ him—he's just a towering, feathered cloak to her, armed to the teeth, his metal mask gleaming coldly in the flicker of the flames to his left. He stares at her for what seems to be an eternal moment, and the sight of his dark eyes glinting behind the cover of his mask makes her heart pound fearfully.

“Not turned, then,” he says, casually, as though he's commenting on the bloody weather. “Surprising, but not altogether unpleasant. Do you live here?”

Eileen looks up at him, shaking, and slowly stands on her own two feet. She wants to ask what he did with Mum, but deep down, she already knows. She's always been smart like that.

“Yes,” she whispers. She hasn't heard her own voice in days. She thought she'd lost it.

The man in the crow mask cranes his head at her, like an inquisitive bird, blinking. “Is there anyone else in there?”

“No.” Eileen's hands clench together behind her back. “In the house, it's—it was just... Mum and... us. Four of us.”

“Ah. You're the only survivor,” he tells her, still casual. “Were you the one that locked the doors and windows?”

She wants to beat him black and blue, until he can't talk to her anymore, and yell at him, and then hit him some more, but she doesn't do any of that. She just shuffles around, her toes curling into the dirt of the cellar floor, remembering how she had to creep over Alice's body to flick the latch shut. “Yes,” she says again.

“How crude. You could have died.”

She scowls at him. “It _worked,_ didn't it? Nobody got out.”

He seems amused, and that makes her angry. “How long have you been hiding?”

The sudden switch of subject bewilders her. “I—don't know. Mum was—her headaches started on Sunday.”

“Today is Friday,” the man says, and Eileen feels her stomach swoop. “You're lucky I came by.”

“I'm not _lucky_!” she hisses, but he isn't surprised by her ire. “Who would call what happened—what happened—” She can't finish that sentence. “....Who the bloody hell are you, anyway, and what are you doing in my house?”

“You're in no position to make demands, lassie,” he says. The ends of his feathered cloak flutter softly around his legs. “I came because I knew there were infected in the area. It's my job to kill them. Is that good enough for you?”

“What's your name?”

“What's _yours_?”

They glare at each other for near half a minute before the man sighs.

“You're not very grateful for someone I saved, but it's in my nature to forgive,” he answers, and considers the padlock on the cellar gate with detached interest before lifting a hand and _halving it_ with the thin blade he's holding. Eileen sucks in a sharp breath. He cut through the metal like it was butter. But she's not afraid. She's envious.

The gate swings open, its ancient hinges creaking, and Eileen, half-starved, dehydrated, steps out in front of the man three heads taller than her, and looks him dead in the eye.

“Teach me.”

What part of his expression she can see tells her he already knows what she wants. “Teach you what?”

“To be like you.”

“That's no jesting matter,” he murmurs.

“I have nowhere and no one to go to,” she says, taking another step. “My sisters are dead, but you're here. Teach me, and I'll leave you alone.”

He gives another sigh. “It's not that simple. I'm part of—a brotherhood. You can't make a decision this important while you're in such a state. You need food in you. Sleep. And then we can talk about it.”

“I'm not changing my mind,” Eileen insists.

“Stubborn little thing, aren't you?” he remarks, flippant enough to make her want to hit him. “Can you walk?”

“Of course,” she says immediately, but he glances down at her bare, battered feet, and begins to turn around, squatting. “No. _Never_.”

“Stuff your pride and get on my back before I decide to leave you here proper, like I _should_ ,” Hunter says—because that's what he is, a hunter, and she'll call him that until she gets a name. “I can't hold you all princess-like unless you prefer my being unable to defend us both. I'm staying at an inn not far from the main road. It won't take long.”

She doesn't feel embarrassed as she climbs on his back, against the judgment wailing at her not to. He smells of soot and blood and leather, and she can feel the hard line of his shoulders under her hands. Strong. She expected it—he'd cleaved that lock apart with the ease a person usually reserves for a practiced, involuntary activity like breathing. Eileen has to hope that one day, she can be like him too—the last week, because it _has_ been a week, nearly, has proven to her just how useless, how weak—how disappointingly cowardly she can be. _I'm too slow. I need to get better. I need to get better so this can never happen again._

Eileen hitches her legs around his waist and holds on as best she can while the man ascends the cellar stairs, the soft material of his cloak bunching in her fists. Everything aches. Even her finger-bones ache.

“When did you last sleep?”

His voice makes her realize she'd been dozing off. “I don't know.”

“And you're still coherent,” he says, to himself more than anyone else. “Well. Mostly.”

She scowls at his hood and contemplates headbutting him for an instant. “Sod off.”

“You've a mouth on you,” Hunter grumbles as they come to the door at the top of the stairs. He nudges it open gently with a knee, and the desolation of the house beyond stretches before them.

Eileen is glad she cannot see a foot past where they're standing, despite the broken columns of moonlight streaming through the grimed windows. The whole living room stinks of decay and filth, like shite and piss and stale wine, the faded notes of Mum's perfume and the flowers Susan had gathered the past weekend. _I will not cry_ , she tells herself even as her body betrays her and her hands tremble.

“Do you have fire?”

Hunter jerks in surprise, stopping in the middle of the room. Glass crunches beneath his boots, and something else—squelches. She doesn't want to think about it.

“Do I have—?”

“Fire, or a way to start it,” she repeats, pleased with how steady she sounds. “The house is wood. It'll burn. I can't... bury them. You said Mum was infected. She—it doesn't go away if you die, does it? If someone touches, or... something _eats—_ ” She stops there, feeling sick, and it makes her furious. She needs to do what's _right_ , she has to, she's still the eldest, she needs to be firm, like Mum. “Do you have fire or don't you?”

“...I do.”

She grits her teeth, fingers sinking into the cloak. “Then do it, when you walk out. There's nothing for me here.”

Hunter's voice is very quiet when he next speaks. “Alright.”

 

  

☩

 

 

That night, a widow's house on the outskirts of a lonely village in the nameless hinterlands burns down, its withered wood going up in flames, turning to coal, then to ash; more than a mile away, a strangely-dressed man drags a girl, near dead, into an inn without guests.

He orders a bath to be drawn for his charge—because that's what she is now, isn't she?—and food to be prepared, and then asks for the innkeep to send for a carriage that will carry them away from here two days hence. While the girl is ushered away by their jittery host, he goes to his room— _their room_ , for now—and peels off his uniform, the waxed cape and gloves, until he's standing there in nothing but his soft breeches and the loose white undershirt he favors. The mask goes last, flopping on the top of the pile like a discarded face, its empty gaze staring up at the wooden rafters of the ceiling. Sometimes it feels like that's all he is—a Crow. He supposes that's the point.

Almost forty-five minutes later, when he's finished with the dinner a skittish scullery maid's brought him, the door to the cramped, sparse room opens, and the girl wanders in, appearing less lost than he expected her to. She's tall, for her age, can't be a day over fifteen, sixteen, maybe, with fine, fair hair, and steel-grey eyes keener than some he's seen on people ten times her senior. She's got a sharp face, bordering on sour, a strong jaw, and lips that look like they'd be suited to smiling. He has a feeling, however, that she's not the type to do that often. She blinks at him, and shuts the door behind her.

“So,” she says, her thick brows climbing upward, “what's next?”

He crosses his legs, leaning back in his seat. “I'm going to rest. You're going to rest.”

She frowns. “I mean _after_ that.”

“Impatience isn't becoming, lassie,” he reminds her, and then reaches behind himself to pull the tie out of his hair. He shakes it loose, hissing in pain when his sore scalp protests at the movement. “If you haven't run away screaming by Monday, I'll take you back to the association with me. More than that, I'll not say.”

The frown turns into a toothy snarl. “Fine,” she acquiesces. She marches over to the bed (which, mercifully enough, is quite large, if a bit decrepit) and flings back the covers before diving underneath them, pulling them up to her chin vengefully. “Are you going to turn out that light, or will I have to get up again?”

“Don't push it,” he warns her, but does as she says anyhow. The room goes dark after he douses the lantern, and he crawls into bed beside her after kicking his boots off, too tired to be thinking about propriety. Gods, he's exhausted. He lets his eyes shut, breathing in the scent of clean linens. It is good that even rundown, ramshackle inns in the middle of nowhere have standards they adhere to.

“You reek,” the girl's voice says. He's turned his back to her and her to his, so he can only imagine her disapproving expression.

“An unfortunate side-effect of the job,” he mumbles.

“You'll dirty the sheets.”

“Then I'll sleep _over_ them after I take a bath.”

“Eugh.”

He makes an unintelligible sound into his overstuffed pillow. “Be quiet. I won't say it again.”

And there is quiet, at least for a few minutes, before he hears her shuffling again and he starts to pray that the night will not have to end with him strangling a young woman (he would never, but the promise of silence is attractive).

“Eileen.”

“Sorry?”

Another shuffle. “My name,” she murmurs. “It's Eileen.”

“I'm Amon,” he says. “Delighted to meet you. Now, Eileen— _please,_ shut up.”

She listens. He falls asleep soon after.

 

 

 

☩

 

 

She takes the badge on at sixteen, one year later than the youngest hunter in surviving record, but no one congratulates her. It is not a job to be congratulated for. She rankles at the idea that she's restricted to simple _beast_ hunting— _I wanted to be like you_ , she told Amon, crossing her arms, staring up at him, and he'd held her gaze before speaking and finally turning away to finish taking apart his handgun.

“The Crows are not a rank you should be raring to join,” he'd mumbled, reaching for the polish at one side of his worktable. “It's already bad enough you're a hunter—don't go looking for trouble, lassie. It never ends well.”

“You talk like an old man. You're only twenty.”

“And where could you have heard that?”

She'd sneered at him. “Marie has a big mouth. What do I have to do to become one? A Crow, I mean.”

They both know he knew exactly what she meant before she'd said it. He hadn't given her an answer. Still hasn't.

Eileen learns at sixteen-and-a-half that two blades are better than one. She has her first pair of swords forged—wields them with pride. She carries a gun, as well, at Amon's insistence, but firearms are what _he_ loves—she does it more to silence the complaints than anything else.

He waits for a failure, for a space in which he can complain, but she gives him none. “The best of the generation,” they call her that year at the recruitment ceremony, and she spares him one smug glance across the room. There are not many hunters—it is not difficult to see why. Everyone knows everyone. The network is small but efficient, thorough and careful. It's too dangerous to be in the same place for a long time in great numbers. The location for the ceremony is different every year. She thinks she can get used to this: to the easy, firm camaraderie, and the shared exploits. She cannot see the world Amon speaks so acidly of, the place of darkness he seems to think the Crows live in.

That changes, of course—when she goes to Yharnam. She turns seventeen the afternoon they arrive.

A Crow always accompanies a group of hunters when they set out in groups larger than two. They're not popular amongst the bulk of the rest, though Eileen does not understand why. They have a job, they do it. When a recruit in her team suggests the Crow shadow them—out of sight, out of mind, the boy says—Eileen refuses him, icily, and demands that Amon ride in the carriage with them. The recruit screws his face up, as though he's smelled something sour, and Amon goes stiff beside her. She does not know any other Crows, not personally, but she does know one thing—the cape is not a crime. She says so.

“You've not taken up the mantle yet, have you?” she asks him, absolutely aware he hasn't. “Besides, Father Enrich appointed me leader. When you have your own squad, I'll let you order me about. Maybe.”

The recruit storms off in a huffy rage while the rest of the team shuffles around awkwardly. The recruit's friends go to the second carriage, to accompany him, and Eileen is left alone with the Crow she defended. It's not too bad inside the carriage, just dark, and it smells pervasively of leather and horse.

“Why did you do that?” Amon says as she knocks on the roof of the hansom to let the driver know they're ready to leave.

Everything rattles, and Eileen stops resting her head on the side of the door. She'll get hurt that way.

“Do what?” she responds, sounding totally innocent. “I haven't the slightest what you're talking about.”

He rolls his eyes. “Not again, you hear me? I'll manage on my own. Always have.”

“Can't really avoid a thing if I can't remember ever doing it, now can I?”

She can't see his face, but she knows he's grimacing. “You're impossible.”

The ride is mostly silent, punctuated by the sounds of clopping hooves and the rumble of the carriage's wheels on the dirt road—and then cobbles. She leans out of the window when the driver tells her they're approaching the city, expecting something, buildings, yes, a skyline, yes, but nothing like what she actually gets when she looks toward the horizon: the heights of the houses and the towers and the imposing bridges are so different that all she can see the longer she stares is a row of broken teeth. The sky above the city is the color of wine—smoke and smog trail from hundreds of chimneys, soot-black, curling into the clouds like swaths of dark ribbons. She can taste ash and coal and _metal_ in the air.

She turns to Amon. “I don't like it.”

He snorts. “I'd be worried if you did.”

No one but a gaunt man in too-thin clothing greets them when the carriage drops them off at the gates to the Central District, and he doesn't say much as the rest of the squad piles out of the second hansom to join them. He appraises them with a detached sort of—what is it, exactly? Disgust? It seems like it. Eileen sets her jaw and crosses her arms, making sure that her cloak falls far enough to one side that the man can see the blades sheathed at her hips.

“Hunters,” he drawls, not even bothering to mention a name. “We are most honored by your presence. The people of Yharnam welcome you to our humble city...”

“We've been informed that someone requested our presence,” Eileen says, and the man's eyes slide to her, but she doesn't shrink from him. “An artist?”

The guide's crooked nose wiggles at that, sallow cheeks sucking inward. A cold breeze blows past them, making the neck of his shirt fly open—he's wearing the cross of the Healing Church around his neck on a leather thong. It looks like a tumor, sitting there against his pallid skin and twig-like collarbones. “Yes. Quite. I shall take you to her. It is, after all, my duty.”

 _You don't sound much happy about it, though,_ Eileen thinks as he stalks away on long legs, scuttling from them like an overgrown spider.

“Charming fellow,” a curly-haired girl at the back comments lowly as they start to follow him from a safe distance through the narrow alleyways. Her name is—Jane? It's likely. Eileen isn't good with keeping track of quiet people. She forgets they exist.

“Yharnamites aren't known for their appreciation of outsiders,” Amon says, keeping his voice down. “We're all city-born, but...”

“ _I'm_ not,” Eileen finishes for him. Her lips curl in a nasty grin. “I wonder what could have tipped him off—accent? Good looks? Intimidating stature?”

The recruit she'd scuffled with earlier scoffs, but it earns her at least a small chuckle from everyone else, Amon included. There's five of them in total, Crow excluded: the recruit, whose name is most likely Thomas (she hopes it is, because if she has to use the name and he doesn't respond, it'll be rather awkward), Jane, Eileen herself, and a giant of a hunter—he must be at least four heads taller than Eileen, looming over even Amon. He doesn't say much, just grunts at intervals to indicate approval, or... what she hopes is approval, anyway. He hasn't been rebellious or belligerent, and doesn't mind taking cues from her, though she wishes he were a little more vocal—it's hard to know what someone wants when they don't mention it.

“Gascoigne isn't from anywhere near hereabouts, either,” Jane says suddenly, and Eileen nearly trips over her own two feet. “Are you?”

“No,” is the only thing the colossal young man says in return, drawing his preposterously wide hat down further over his brow. He keeps his dark beard neatly trimmed, close to the face, and carries a gun that's probably as long as Eileen's shin. He's fond of axes, from what she's seen, though he could easily split most things in two with just his _hands_ —he's not a hunter she would like to anger.

“You've been here before, right?” Jane asks, and for a very long moment Eileen thinks Gascoigne isn't going to respond.

“I have,” he concedes at last. “Father Enrich suggested I come along because of it.”

“Can't say I'm too thrilled with the place,” Eileen remarks. She's still keeping an eye on the guide up ahead of them, whose head is bobbing comically above the high edges of his coat's gorget. “Where are all the people? I thought it'd be packed.”

“Yharnamites are skittish at best,” Amon tells her. They pass under a pair of gargantuan streetlamps, and the rivets holding the leather-covered sections of Amon's mask together glitter quicksilver in their light. “The only ones you'll find out and about after evening are the faithful—and the Church hunters. Or mobsters.”

“I take it this isn't your favorite visiting spot,” Eileen murmurs, and he shrugs, which, for him, means _yes_.

Amon's tone is odd when he speaks again. “There is no choice involved. Most of our work is done here.”

 _Our_. The Crows. She doesn't know why hearing him say that stings.

“Let's just get this over with,” Thomas snaps, and in retort Jane hits him on the arm.

“Behave,” the brunette warns him. “Your contract is riding on this, remember? You have one chance, so don't waste it.”

“Worry about yourself,” he says, lips pressing into a displeased line. “ _I'll_ be fine, as long as I have room to work. Don't get in my way.”

“And _that_ attitude why Father Enrich delayed your signing on,” Eileen cuts in. The glare Thomas sends her could start fires, but Eileen is not scared of men—only beasts. “This is supposed to be a team effort.”

“Says the _pet_ ,” Thomas spits. “Whose palms did you have to grease to get in so early, whelp?”

The guide is waiting for them at the bottom of a large, winding staircase, but Amon stops them before they can proceed, out of earshot, just as Eileen prepares a worthy comeback.

“Thomas, _focus_ ,” he says, and the ice in his voice makes the hairs on Eileen's neck stand on end. “And Eileen—you're squad leader. Act like it.”

She mumbles an apology under her breath, which she's sure everyone can tell she doesn't mean in the least, but it gets Thomas to stuff it, and so she counts it a victory. Instead she observes the steep stairs, feeling something deep in her stomach pull at the gloom stretching before them.

“Your contact lives in the Cathedral Ward,” the guide drones, gesturing to the staircase with one bony hand. “This is as far as I go, good hunters. You'll find what you're looking for behind the red door.”

He gives them a nod and then wanders off—they look after him as he disappears into the encroaching dimness, vanishing behind a corner in the end.

“Is everyone here so bloody cryptic?” Eileen asks irritably, breaking the silence, and Amon responds with a dry chuckle.

“Interesting choice of words.”

No one says anything as they ascend. The Cathedral Ward is built like a hive, buildings pressing in on each other, squat and forbidding. Eileen goes first, since she was the one Father Enrich briefed before they left. To the west the Grand Cathedral rises, tiered and magnificent, but somehow wrong—she's glad they won't be heading in that direction. The team wanders down the street until they come to the door the guide describes: its knocker is in the shape of a lion's head, jaws spread wide in a roar, the luster of its wood scarlet. There is no knob on the outside.

Eileen reaches out and gives the knocker a firm tap. One second, two, three—ten more pass until a rattle sounds out and a cool, feminine voice addresses them.

“Who's there?”

“We're associates of Father Enrich. You sent for us. Said you had information about our missing team.”

“Half the town knows,” the voice says, slightly contemptuous. “So how do _I_ know you are who you say you are? Prove it to me.”

There's the prompting phrase. It's a good thing Eileen memorized the passcode. “Perhaps a verse would help? ' _Dragons with wicked eyes and wicked hearts; on blacken'd wings does deceit take flight—the First of My children, lost to night_.'”

The person behind the door hums thoughtfully. “So far so good. Show me your badge.”

“How will you see it if I do?”

“Just do it.”

Eileen resists the urge to roll her eyes and does as instructed, yanking her hunter's badge from where it clings to the belt at her hip. She lifts it up to the door, feeling slightly foolish for showing it off so proudly to an object that can't even _see_.

“That's enough.”

She puts it away. “Can we come in now?”

“One last thing,” the muffled voice says. “There's supposed to be a Crow with you. I have a question for him.”

“I'm here, Miss Montague,” Amon answers shortly.

“Is my brother older than me by seven or ten years?”

“Neither,” Amon says, clasping his hands behind his back. “You don't have a brother.”

There's a pause—and then a series of clicks, a creak of hinges and a groan of wood, and the door slowly swings inward to reveal a young woman standing on its threshold. Her black hair is tied back with an artless lack of care Eileen finds familiar. She's shorter than Eileen expected—hearing her speak had given Eileen a different image; but the person in the doorway is dressed in strikingly plain attire, all muted colors, and her trousers are dotted with splatters of paint. She has a symmetrical face, smart eyes—dark as pitch, alert, intelligent, framed by thick bristly lashes and meticulously arched brows. Her slender mouth is pulled downward in a show of wariness,

“Hmph. If you're impostors, you're well-informed.” She steps aside, letting them pass. “In.”

The hunters trudge into the house—Gascoigne has to duck to avoid hitting the top of his head against the doorjamb—and as soon as that's done, the artist slips by them and refastens the variety of locks by the knob, her small hands moving with practiced grace.

Eileen blinks at her when she turns around. “Expecting trouble?”

Montague looks at her like she's just said something irrefutably stupid. “I _always_ expect trouble.”

The room around them is lit only by gas-powered lamps—the heavy drapes over the windows by the door block any light from getting out. Eileen thought the house was dark, looking at it from the outside. Even so, most of the lamps are situated at the back of the room. They're standing in a carefully-kept salon, complete with fine rugs and a dainty chaise longue by the shadowed fireplace. An easel sits up against the wall by the salon's exit, a sheet of linen covering the canvas it's supporting. Eileen can't see anything that points to obvious personalization, at least outwardly—a private person, then. She approves. They tend to last longer than others.

“You must be Agnes Montague,” Jane says, and the artist makes a displeased sound.

“Just call me Brielle. No one uses my first name, anyway,” she says as she moves toward the table across the chaise longue. She picks up a book sitting there and leafs through it, stops when she finds what she's searching for, and pulls a folded note from between its pages.

“Brielle, then,” Jane corrects herself, and readjusts her round spectacles. “You were the last person to be in contact with the pair that arrived earlier this week, weren't you?”

“It seems that way,” Brielle says, setting the book down again. “They finished clearing the danger from this part of the Ward, but the woman mentioned they had another lead—and told me to call for you and give you this if they weren't back in a day.”

Eileen takes the square of paper from her, feeling cold prickle at her toes as she reads the fine print on the parchment.

 

_Gone to Greysteel Lake for a followup, manor on the shore._

_Henryk still with me. Cultists, we think._

_Hope to see you soon, in one piece._

_—K._

 

A specific word stands out to her.

“Cultists,” Amon says, wholly unimpressed. “Why am I not surprised?”

Brielle smirks. “Here, in the bastion of the pious and devoted? I'm _shocked_.”

“Wouldn't live here, even if you paid me,” Eileen says as she pockets the note. “Not a day.”

“I'm waiting for a painting to sell—and then I'm out of here, mother and sister included,” the artist says, and then seems to realize she divulged something borderline personal. “Either way, you've gotten what you came for. I think it's time for you to leave—and no offense, but I hope we never meet again.”

“It wouldn't mean anything good for you, so... the feeling's mutual,” Eileen assures her. “Thanks.”

Brielle walks over to the door, going for the locks. “Yeah, yeah. _Go_.”

 

 

☩

 

It takes them about an hour to get through the swathes of dead bodies piled up in the cellar of the manor the note had mentioned, and another hour to get through the procession of fanatics gathered around the reservoir in the basement. They're all gathered around the lip of the strange artificial lake, kneeling on the damp cobbles, bowing and praying, and, of course, in _robes_. Because cultists without ominous flowing robes are not proper cultists in the first place.

Eileen downs one by cracking the pommel of her sword over his head. He falls with a choked gurgle, toppling into the water. Drown, crazy bastard, she thinks viciously, and barely ducks out of the way as another makes a lunge for her. _That_ cultist is relieved of her head by a swing of Jane's scythe.

It goes on like that for a good fifteen minutes, until every robed idiot is lying prostrate around them, either dead or dying or very knocked out, and that's when Katherine St. Michael steps over two bodies, prim in her leather and linen as always, and smiles an exhausted smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes.

“Took you a while, didn't it?” she says, and Eileen's only response is to hit her over the head, if lightly.

“How in the heavens did you end up in _here_? And where is Henryk?”

“Alive,” Katherine says. “Broke a leg. I hid him in the next room over.”

Katherine's brown hair is tangled and there's a weariness in her expression that outstrips any sort of irritation Eileen may have felt at the situation—one that could have been easily avoided with due diligence and patience. The others disperse around them, securing the chamber, making sure none of their opponents are about to get up any time soon.

“You're lucky we came in time,” Eileen says with a sigh, rubbing at her forehead with the back of a wrist. “This wreck is in the middle of nowhere.”

Katherine looks back out over the cistern, and the still waters. “I'm just happy you made it. I'm ready to get out of here. I don't care about the mystery any longer—whatever this rabble of louts is fixated on, I don't care. This city is a boil. I'm ready for food. And a _bath_.”

“That makes two of us. Let's get you out of here.”

But these things are easier said than done, because it's at that moment something Eileen thought was a severed hand coils around Thomas' left leg, and by the time she's shouted a warning, the whatever-it-is has lifted him and thrown him across the room. Everyone stands to attention as he lands—or, more appropriately, is plastered to the opposite wall by the force of the momentum—and Katherine curses, loudly, as a tentacle lashes high above them.

The water in the cistern splashes, disturbed, and out of the depths of the reservoir rises an abomination, twisted beyond all compare, and—oh, Eileen doesn't know. Poetry isn't her realm of expertise. All she knows is that she has to kill it before _it_ kills _her_.

Thomas is still groaning and trying to get to his feet when the rest of them regroup in the center of the room. A tide of brackish water sloshes over the floor, wetting the cobbles again, as a mass of roiling flesh careens high above them.

“Way too many arms,” Eileen says at last, and even Gascoigne tips his hat back for a better view.

“Looks like Henryk will have to wait a little longer,” Katherine murmurs.

The creature in the water screams, like a dying child, and the world explodes into chaos.

 

 

 

☩

 

 

 

_I seldom see them apart, truth be told._

_It's always just the same group of them—the girl from the hinters, Eileen, she's the ringleader._

_The Crow, the tall, pinch-faced one, Amon, he follows them everywhere, and the highland giant, Gascoigne, he's found friends in their company. It was about time. I was starting to wonder whether that boy had a voice. There's Henryk—no family name, or none he will divulge—padding alongside them like some sort of shadow. He's especially devoted to Gascoigne, some sort of hero-worship, and their fighting styles work well together. Spectacularly, some would say. Potential patrnership should be considered: they would benefit from going on missions together. Henryk talks far too much, and Gascoigne not at all. It would foster positivity, if Gascoigne is not reduced to gagging him. Gods know I would._

_Then there's St. Michael's daughter. Admirable hunter. Can't find her when I need her most, though, and it's almost always got to do with laundry. She's good with a knife, good with a spear, good with a threaded cane. Chores, however, are another matter. Recently acquired a sweetheart, if I'm correct. A slinky lad, Cedric, who spits arcane nonsense more often than words, but it's not a bad thing, not naturally, of course. He's an alchemist of some sort. Terrible with heavy weapons—never hand him a cleaver. Katherine's smiles come easy when he's about, though she'd cut out her heart before admitting it to anyone yet. Eileen is making eyes at the Crow. Gascoigne has been exchanging letters with a girl from the city (and no one was more surprised upon hearing so but me). Henryk has his contraptions, but I know the lovesick look when I see it—she doesn't know his name, and I suspect she never will. For the blabber he is, the lad has trouble confessing things that matter the most._

_I should be glad to see them grow._

_The only danger of happiness, as you well know, Grandmaster, lies in the abundant opportunity to lose it. Our line of work is not merciful to the structure of the common family. We cannot, in any sense of the word, nurture one, even if we so wish it. You are a hunter for life—nothing changes that, not even death. The young ones disagree, but they have not seen what we've seen, have they?_

_Ah, but listen to me—they are only dallying, and I am worrying about ifs and whens that may never come to pass. I pray they will not. It is a rare thing to see such friendship among the ranks of the newer generations. With every score of years, our recruits grow more detached from the duty that sprung our Order into existence in the first place. Further away from purpose. But times are growing dark, and there is no way to shut it out, no way to deny it, and the only way to test the strength of these new knights lies in a baptism of hardship. Yharnam is stirring. Whispers of a plague in the west are spreading._

_There is a Hunt approaching, Grandmaster. Let us hope our children are strong enough to endure it._

_—_ AN UNSIGNED LETTER ADDRESSED TO HUNTER GRANDMASTER FATHER ENRICH , DATE UNKNOWN

 

 

 

☩

 

 

Eileen learns at eighteen that she likes knowing Amon is watching her more than she should; learns that Katherine cannot abide milk in her tea, _never_ , and that Henryk can sleep with his eyes half-open and therefore trick instructors into thinking he's paying attention—until they call on him to answer a question or participate in a demonstration.

She forgets about the shadows, for a time, and focuses instead on dispelling them. She Dreams, almost every night, toiling in the workshop; she sits on the ground in the garden amidst the swaying flowers, looking up at the moon, so close it seems like you could touch it, pale and colossal, hanging in the sky by an invisible thread, and asks the Doll if it's always been this way. Does day ever dawn in the twilight of the Dream?

“It's been thus as far as I can remember, good hunter,” she says, turning her lacquered eyes upward.

The Doll has a quiet voice, and her hands are cold, and Eileen falls asleep with her head pillowed on the Doll's lap. Doll is careful about not catching hair between the joints of her porcelain fingers. Eileen has never told her that Mum used to do that when she had trouble dozing off, but perhaps she doesn't need to. Doll simply _knows_ , and that's good enough for now. Eileen's not even sure she'd understand the answer if she inquired after it. So she doesn't ask, and continues not knowing, and for a time, that's alright.

One afternoon after a cartload of bodies is brought back for the communal pyres, she corners him in his bare room—he's clueless to the point of not really paying attention until she knocks book out of his hands and sits on his lap. His chair creaks under their combined weight. A breeze blows at her back, stirring the curtains over the window.

“What are you doing?” Amon says. She can feel him talking, where she's got her hands pressed against his chest.

She stuffs down her instinctive response— _you, if I'm lucky—_ and tries to make it sound more palatable instead. “I'd like to think it's rather obvious.”

“I was hoping that wasn't it,” he mumbles. He's lovelier than he has any right being, sitting there with his mussed hair and his... everything. Dumb strong jaw, nice brows—she's memorized his face over the years. She doesn't even have to look at him to know there's a tiny mole under his right eye, too small to see from a great distance. When did she start thinking about him as anything other than the Crow?

“Why?” Eileen says, her fingers curling in his shirt. _Thump-thump_ , goes his heart, warm and steady against her skin. “Is it me? Am I, uh...”

He shakes his head, and then glances at her with—she doesn't know what it is, but it makes her shoulders tense. Not in an entirely bad way, either.

“No, it's just—it's not a good idea. To—to be attached.”

“We're already attached, Amon,” she replies, confused. “We're practically grafted together. If you're not feeling it, just tell me and I'll sod off. Better than making up some excuse—”

“It's not an _excuse_ ,” he insists, and the vehemence in his voice takes her off guard. “You're fine. Heavens preserve me, you're _more_ than fine. But if—” He stops there, and sighs, rubbing at his face tiredly. “I don't want to endanger you that way. If something happens...”

She stares down at him, and squeezes his knees between her thighs. “I watched my mother kill my sisters with her bare hands. The damage has already been done. I'm a hunter, remember?”

One of his hands cups a hip. “Unfortunately. You always were stubborn.”

She draws nearer, touching her nose to his. “But I'm not a little girl anymore. I can make my own decisions. And I want to know—I want to _know_ before anything _can_ happen. I don't want to live with the regret. Are you going to make me talk much longer?”

“This could end badly,” he says.

It's not convincing in the least. She kisses him, and he sucks in a sharp breath through his nose, like he didn't expect it, but the way he clutches at her shoulders indicates otherwise. The handles of the chair press into her knees as she moves closer. She doesn't care. She's been thinking about what this could possibly feel like for years—no chair is going to get in her way, she thinks as she rakes her hands through his hair. Softer than she'd thought it'd be.

“Last chance,” she warns him, more or less breathless, when she pulls away for air.

He forces a startled laugh out of her by standing—she clings to him, and he holds her, hands nestled behind her knees, until he can waddle the short distance across the room and let them fall to the bed together. The sheets rumple as she flips them over, taking the top again.

“I'll pass,” he says at last. There's color high in his cheeks, and his skin is hot.

“Good,” she affirms, and then leans down to finish what she started.

 

 

 

☩

 

 

 

_Ellie,_

_Cos turned ten today. You should see her—she's a precocious creature, grabbing at everything, asking questions no other girl her age should be asking, and talking so fast. She's picking up new words like you wouldn't believe. Used 'rambunctious' in a sentence yesterday, though it took her five tries to get it right. She looks more like him every day. It's not all in the colors, or the features, but the way she laughs and smiles and talks—and scuffs her shoes. Some habits, I'm convinced, are passed along through the blood. We could never get him to keep his shoes in good order, could we? He was always dragging his feet, ruining the soles. I'm hoping Cos will grow out of it. Only time will tell._

_Maybe civilian life is making me soft. I try to keep up with training, doing errands for the villagers, killing what they can't. What they're scared of—it seems like child's play to me. Not many living creatures can inspire terror after what we've fought. I miss it, at times. You, and everyone, and the trouble we used to get into. It's good to have a purpose. You need it when you're younger. I suppose I do still have a purpose—just a different one. It walks on two legs and devours chocolate like Henryk drinks cognac, and can't keep its eyes open (thankfully) past six. Her energy levels scare me._

_I've heard you're doing well. In the new post, that is. Your latest exploits came down through the grapevine to me. Something about a castle and exploding barrels? Don't be too upset—Henryk worries, as he's prone to. Gascoigne's been asking after you, as well. Will you send him and Viola my regards, the next time you're in town? Viola insists on keeping their daughter in Yharnam. I don't know why. There's work to be had there, of course, but—it's_ Yharnam _._

_If you're in the neighborhood within this month, you could catch the spring festival. It's not a large affair, but the ale's good enough, and we're here. You'd have food and board for as long as you were able to stay. It's not much—just what I have. It's peaceful here, Ellie. A little stifling, I'll admit, but the villagers are kinder than most others, and they've welcomed us like I didn't expect they would. I think they know. It's easy to guess, I suppose. No one's asked about it. I'm organizing a watch—not much of a militia when half your 'soldiers' are farmyards that wouldn't know the pointy end of a blade if it hit them in the face, but I make do. It helps them. Makes them feel more secure, more in control, out here. Too many highwaymen about._

_We'd be happy to have you. Cos would be delighted. She loves you, from what little she knows of you. She's a blessing. I wish he could have seen her grow._

_I know it's been hard, since—_

_Look. I just wanted to tell you, if the road ever feels like too much, or the business too burdensome, our door will always be open. There's a home to be had, if you want it. That's it. Keep safe._

_—K._

 

 

☩

 

 

 

“I want you to have it,” he'd whispered, pressing it into her hand.

She'd turned the badge over in her grip. “Don't talk like that. You'll have use for it yet.”

He'd laughed, just a little, until the cough overtook him and he couldn't speak for a minute. “I've got nothing else, and I don't like wills. You could have my mask, too—though that may be a tad morbid. You passed the exam, didn't you?”

“You know I did,” she'd said quietly.

“You'll be the first Crow to have _two_ badges,” he'd said with a smile. “I still can't understand why you wanted to join—you're strange, lassie.”

She'd snorted and brushed the hair away from his pale face. “You haven't called me that in ages.”

“Been on my mind for a while,” he'd admitted. “It's been good. With you.”

“Amon,” she'd said warningly.

He'd rested his hand on her knee, the blankets around him rustling. “Just _listen_. I'm not getting out of this bed. I could think of worse places to die. And I'm glad you're here.”

“Sentimentality doesn't suit you.”

In the dim light of the room, the dark brown of his eyes had been almost black—maybe even—no, he wouldn't weep.

Amon had just smiled again, and squeezed her hand. “So I've been told.”

He'd been the first of them to go. Blood poisoning, the kind you can't fight, full of fever and wasting and delirium. She'd sat by him as often as she could, between jobs, sometimes with soup, sometimes with a book, sometimes with nothing at all. He'd insisted on being taken to the chapel the day Viola and Gascoigne exchanged vows—put on his best robes and let Eileen brush his hair, and told her it'd be the only day she'd see him in a wheelchair. He was right. They'd been in the front pews with the rest of them, and for the few hours they'd spent there, she could forget. He'd looked healthy. Apologized for not being able to waltz with her, when the new couple had christened the dance floor with an opening number, and Cedric had whisked Katherine away, his fair hair glinting like burnished gold in the candlelight.

“I'm not much for dancing, anyway,” she'd said.

Life goes on after him, not the same, but not quite different, either. They don't bury him—the Brotherhood offers their dead to the crows, to give them to the sky. She becomes the masked marauder in the feathered cloak in their group, trying to fill a space big enough for two with one. It's impossible, but she's always liked a challenge. Father Enrich mistakes her for him, though he doesn't mention it—it's there, in the momentary pause before he comes back to reality and says _Eileen_ instead of the other name on the tip of his tongue.

Cedric is next. Eileen is there the day Katherine comes back alone. Another half with a missing match.

“I can't do this anymore, Ellie,” she says, her hands gripping her mug so tight the knuckles threaten to pop from her flesh. “I can't. I have to think about Cosette. I don't want this to be her future—her legacy.”

They—Katherine and her daughter—go somewhere far from the cities and the industrial centers. Eileen can understand, somewhat, but the desire to leave the life of the hunter deserted her long ago. Maybe if she had a Cosette of her own, she would feel the same way—and seeing as that's not a possibility, she doubts total comprehension will be coming around any time soon. The idea of children makes the hairs on her arms rise. They're some of the most difficult people to protect. They don't listen. A nightmare.

Katherine writes to her. Letters upon letters. They keep coming, even when she doesn't respond. She keeps them bound with a yellow-red thread, a lace in Katherine's favorite color. She'd only realized that months after staring at it—perhaps the choice was subconscious.

They don't last after Katherine resigns. Henryk clings to the old ways—and to Gascoigne. She doesn't see them often. She quickly comes to find that while she does work excellently alone, she does not prefer it.

Eileen learns at forty-nine that time moves too fast, because it doesn't seem to have been a while since the letters stopped coming, and the anniversaries faded into obscurity, though it has been. It has been more than just a while. She loses the ability to recall the finer features of her friends' faces, but she'd know their voices if she heard them, and she does, every night, in her dreams—but not the Dream, because she doesn't Dream anymore. No Crow does. That's the domain of the hunter. She'd given something up, in going to the Crows, and she can't make herself regret it, though she misses the Doll and the sweet smell of the moonflowers.

She nudges the gate open with one foot, comes to stand by a set of stairs—that's all Yharnam seems to be. Stairs. Stairs leading to everywhere and nowhere. She'd passed by what used to be Brielle's house on the way here. It's fallen into disrepair, like much of the city—the windows were lightless, boarded up. Eileen hopes she moved onto greener pastures. Anywhere is better than here.

Being a Crow has taught her to wait. Boredom is hardly worrying. In fact, it's welcome. If you're bored, it means nothing's tried to kill you in the last five minutes. Nothing and no one.

Perhaps she should check in on Viola and the children when she's done here. They should be told. How old would the little one be now? Are orphans all this world can produce?

The sound of someone ascending the steps snaps her to attention. She reaches for the blades, a provisional measure—no one is friendly to a Crow, not at first, anyhow—but her hand slips away from the hilt when the stranger comes into view. For a heartbeat, she sees a specter: the madness of Yharnam has finally bitten deep, and the ghosts of times past have come back to haunt her, that's what she thinks, and then her mind points out the inconsistencies. The stranger is taller than they should be, taller than... who they could have been. Her hair isn't long enough. And the eyes—are not right. Too young, too green. Bright. Ready to fight. Eileen remembers what it was like to be so.

When did the dark steal her wings?

“You must be Eileen,” the stranger with Katherine's face says.

She wants to say so many things. “Is it true, then?” and “How did she die?” or “Did she hate me, before the end?”

But this girl might have none of those answers.

“I am,” is what she responds with. Does she look to the girl the way Amon did to her, that night that happened in another life?

“The book said you'd be friendly. Willing to help,” the stranger murmurs, and then cants her hat back with one gloved finger. “Are you?”

“Depends,” Eileen says. “As long as it doesn't involve flying.”

The girl smirks. “I'm Cosette.”

“I know,” Eileen says. The feathered cloak is heavy on her shoulders, and the badges at her hip seem more _present_ than they did a second ago. “You've got her look about you. She was a good hunter.”

Cosette shrugs. “She never talked about it much. Taught me enough, though.”

“It'll come in handy.”

She doesn't ask why Cosette is here. That would be pointless.

All roads lead to Yharnam, one way or another.

 

 

☩

 

item description:  
A CRUMPLED LETTER, FOLDED AND UNFOLDED COUNTLESS TIMES. NEVER SENT.

 

 

 

_Katherine,_

_I'll see what I can do. No promises. I expect to be drunk._

_—E._

 


End file.
